A Belated Anniversary with Vanilla Choux

Blogging is a great leisure that I can't afford much at the moment, not that I'm complaning, because I'm very busy these days doing things I enjoy a lot, but I do miss coming here, writing a few lines and sending it into the world wide web.
The funny thing is that I actually cook and bake quite a lot, but I just forget to take pictures, or tried recipes that I would like to improve, and I don't always find the time to give it a second go.

The belated birthday mentionned, is actually of this blog, which celebrated it's third birthday on the 1st of May. It didn't slip my mind, but it didn't fit into my schedule either. My pupp got neutered and I had to put her a pyjama on and feed her her medicine, which believe me, was no piece of cake! (no pun intended)

As my first love goes to baking, I prefer to celebrate anniversary with a dessert. I've been practising my choux pastry skills these days, and wanted to share this recipe with you.

Making choux pastry isn't that difficult, the difficult part is more about cooking them right. Haven't we all seen our choux rise in the oven beautifully, thinking they are done, taking them out of the oven, to see them crumble and flatten miserably (raise your hand if this sounds familiar *raising hand*).

The choux pastry really needs to dry out, to be able to hold well even out of the oven. The recommended cooking time on the recipes are never enough with my oven, I sometimes have to double it. So once again, know your oven!

Choux Pastry with Vanilla Filling (from chefsimon.com)

for about 40 choux

choux pastry

25cl Water
80gr Butter
3 Eggs
150gr Flour
A pinch of salt

In a sauce pan, on a medium heat, put the water and the butter with the pinch of salt. When the butter is melted, take the pan away from the fire and pour in the flour in one go. Using a wooden spoon, start combining both until you get a ball of dough. Put the pan with the dough back on the fire, and "dry" it out a little more, until it leaves some "traces" at the bottom of the pan.

Preheat your oven to 200°C (no fan).

Now starts the hard work if you don't have a standing mixer. You have to incorporate the egg, one by one, and wait until it's smooth again to add the next one. Normally 3 should do, but check by putting one finger on the dough, it should come out with some dough on it, with the shape of a beak.

Pipe your choux while the dough is still luke warm, don't place them to close to one another. You can press down the little beak you get from piping with a wet finger.

Place your choux in the oven for about 20 minutes (in my oven it's more 35) until they have risen nicely and have a golden color, at that point you can open the oven door (to let the steam out) lower the temperature to 170°C, close the oven door again and cook for 5 more minutes.
Check in the oven, I personnaly turn a choux up side down, to check if the bottom is dry, if so I take them out of the oven to let them cool.

Using a smal sharp knife, pierce a hole at the bottom of each choux to fill them more easily later.

Vanilla Cream (crème Diplomate)

1/2 Liter of Milk
1 Vanilla Bean
5 Egg Yolks
3 Sheets of Gelatin
50gr of Flour
20gr of Cornstarch
100gr Sugar
20cl of Cream

Heat up the milk with the vanilla bean split in half and its seeds scratched out into the milk.

In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until you have something smooth. Had the flour and cornstarch that you have sieved into this. Combine well, you don't want lumps.

In a bowl of cold water, place yout sheet of gelatin.

Add half of the milk (with the vanilla bean taken out) to the egg mixture and whisk together. You can pour that back into the sauce pan with the rest of the milk and place it on a medium heat and keep whisking. After a few minutes it's going to thicken to a consistant cream.
Add the soften sheet of gelatin that you have pressed in your hands to remove as much water as you can, keep stirring for the galetin to disolve and set aside.

In order not to have a "skin" on top of you cream, you butter the surface or put saran wrap right on top of it. Let it cool down a little.

In the mean time, take the cream out of the fridge (it has to be cold) and whisk it to whipped cream, that you can add carefully to the previous preparation, just be carefull that it's cool enough.

Using a pipping bag with a "seringue" nozzle, you can fill each choux individually and place them in the fridge a couple of hours to let the cream set.

As on the picture you can serve with a chocolate sauce, or a caramel one, depending on your taste.

Mango and Vanilla Jam

I think some people should look for their inner child more often, it would make everyday life much more fun. My inner child is alive and kicking, I actually have to be carefull not let it take over. Because playing hide and seek in the supermarket, stops being cute when you're not a toddler anymore or using an IKEA shopping cart like a kick scooter, to race thru the aisle can be dangerous (believe me...).

Grown up life is full of advantages, but has it's share of duties aswell. I try to keep them to a minimum, but certain things just need to be done. Like filling your tax forms (just got mine today...), go to some doctors appointment or mop the floor every now and then.
At least as a child, when you did a chore, you got a reward from your parents or a teacher. But as a grown up nobody congratulates you for doing the dishes anymore or the dentist does not give you a lollypop anymore, ahhhh the injustice.

That's why sometimes, I reward myself when I did something I just had to do, though I didn't wanted. A few weeks ago, I had one of those doctor's appointment, that I went to because my mum wants me to (and I can't say no to her).
So when I was finished with it, while doing my errands, I stumbled upon a nice copper pan to make jam and decided that I've deserved it. Plus with all the jam I'm making thru the year, it's really more of an investement (yes, I'm good at convincing myself).

And for a new utensil, I thought a new recipe would be nice. I've never done jam with exotic fruits so far, I tend to do it with the fruits that are abundant around here (prunes, blackberry, cherry...). Mango was my choice of the day with a bit of vanilla.
I like the result just like this, where you can really taste the fruit. But I think it would go well with pineapple aswell, or maybe replace the vanilla with some ginger, to give it more "zing" as Nigella would say.

Mango and Vanilla Jam

4 Mangos (which made 1,2kg of flesh)
800gr Sugar
1 Vanilla Pod
1 Lemon

Peel, remove the pit and cut the mangos into cubes. Place them into a bowl with the sugar, the lemon zest and juice, mix with a spatula so the sugar is everywhere. Leave it like this for at least 2 hours.

After that rest, you should have some juice from the fruit that combines with the sugar on the bottom of the bowl. As I didn't want to have too big chunks in the jam, I used a plunging mixer to make it into smaller pieces, but not a soup either.

Pour the mixed mangos into a big pan, cut the vanilla pod into half, scrape out the seeds and add them to the mixture aswell as the pod itself.

On a medium to high heat, cook the jam for about 20 minutes, stir often. Place a plate in the fridge when you start cooking it, and check if it's done by placing some jam on the cold plate, when you tilt it, it should not be too runny.

When cooked, pour immediatly into glass jars that you have boiled, place the lid on and leave them to cool upside down.